Music fads come and go, but every so often a horrible new genre will catch fire and become a permanent stain on the fabric of modern music, selling millions of albums and steering the general tastes of an entire generation of kids desperate for a band to relate to, a soundtrack to their bad taste formative years. Below are several of the worst offenders of the craft – the styles we’ll look back on as the Worst Music Genres of All Time.
Emo
Goth’s limp-wristed cross-dressing little brother got his heart broken, and he wants the world to see the mascara streaks as he wails on webcam. An intentionally effeminate musical genre that encourages people to wallow in self-pity and whine about their lives, emo has reduced an entire generation of American males to falsely brooding, whimpering Twilight fans who would rather have a good cry and cut themselves to the sounds of geometric hairstyles than man up and deal with their daddy issues. If musical genres were oddballs of our childhood, emo is the creepy weird girl down the street who regularly shat herself on purpose because she wanted everyone to smell it.
Crunk
Let’s call it what it is: Ringtone Rap, “music” designed seemingly specifically for ringing phones and cheering on stereotype-enforcing buffoonery. Cracked out, utterly dumb on every level and proud of it, these songs focus on a four-second loop of music under a narrative full of nothing but bitches, cash and the most ridiculously gaudy bling the mind can conceive. The Ying Yang Twins are so obnoxiously bad it’s barely believable as reality – their entire existence is based on celebrating idiocy, and the fact that anyone’s paying attention to them at all is an ugly symptom of this massive, pus-filled musical STD. The genre’s willfully-dumb misogynistic lifespan was prolonged by Three 6 Mafia’s Oscar win (yes, really) for the Hustle & Flow soundtrack, and Lil Jon can still be found screaming “YeeeAAYAAHH!!!” at strip joints in a town near you.
Scuzz Rock
Back in the day, a good chunk of hair metal bands were brimming with guitar virtuosos who just happened to have a thing for hairspray, leather pants and impossible mountains of willing groupies. They were replaced by riff-riding glam sensations like Mötley Crüe, which was all fine and good – until they inspired an entirely new generation of assholes with spiky hair, leather wristbands and limbs full of cliched tattoos of things like naked chicks, skulls, broken hearts and knuckle letters, who also happened to suck badly at their rock n’ roll fantasy.
Bands like Hinder, Buckcherry and Sick Puppies, hopeless, misogynistic, formulaic mediocrity relentlessly pushed by the dying major labels as the future of Rock, who fap religiously to “Rock of Love,” wishing against all wishes that they could be Bret Michaels for just one day. They raid Nikki Sixx’s garbage for used condoms and syringes, hoping some of that godly sleaze will rub off on them… or at least smell a little like Kat Von D.
Nu-Metal
We now have an entire generation of suburban white kids painting their faces, wearing masks or just doing their best to look menacing while screaming about the agony of life. Look at it as the place where emo kids go once they’ve gotten their asses kicked enough times to finally get seriously pissed off, you guys. They may not be cutting themselves anymore, but they can’t wait to show you their scars. And yell about it. A lot.
Misguided stomping tantrums passing as entertainment for an entire generation of kids is a lucrative business these days, as more and more disgruntled kids from disgruntled recession-strapped neighborhoods are raging against anything and everything they can. Much like gangsta rap, nu-metal has given kids a touchstone for poseurdom, a reference point for false-balls posturing and intimidating attitudes. Driving through middle America, it’s a crushing thing to see just how down with the sickness so many of these kids still are. OOOOOOOOON-WA-Ah-Ah-Ah!
Stoner Bands
We’re not talking about jam bands or stoner/desert rock like Kyuss and the like; this is about the guys who heard Cypress Hill or Sublime’s “Smoke Two Joints” and thought to themselves “Man, it would be so awesome to be a mascot for weed!” – and then proceeded to build a brand that resembles Cheech & Chong doing interpretive dance at an Insane Clown Posse concert.
Like Kottonmouth Kings, for instance:
You know you suck when even potheads are making fun of your nug-loving idiocy.
Techno/Electronica
When an entire genre of music is reliant upon the listener to be tripping balls on ecstasy in order to enjoy it, you know it belongs on this list. After all, it’s scientifically impossible to feel like anything more than a complete tool when you’re not on drugs, dancing to two solid hours of unchanging nn-tss nn-tss nn-tss while jaw-grinding idiots in bright neon parachute pants suck their pacifiers and spin their glowsticks all around you. But techno has escaped the raves, giving spray-tanned douche meatheads around the world a common ground of appreciation with their weavealicious press-on girlfriends.
Picking up a girl at a rave may be like shooting fish in a barrel (just look for the one with giant pupils who’s rubbing on everybody), but Dave Chappelle nailed the problem with that idea in the following clip:
Nuff said.
Rap-Rock
An incredibly unfortunate offshoot of Rage Against The Machine’s rise to stardom was the industry-buoyed advent of an entire generation of rap-rockers who built obnoxious bro-anthems around one simple concept: suburban white kids are really angry at having nothing to be angry about, and they secretly believe they can rap. There’s a special place in hell reserved for all the fratty idiots who went apeshit over Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff” and idolized every dude with daddy issues and tribal tattoos who screamed about how agonizing life is.
Bizkit, Kid Rock, Papa Roach, Linkin Park and their excremental kin have feasted heavily on faux anger and very basic rock riffs with some wicka-wicka thrown in and a fake air of badassery and rural cool. Unfortunately, millions of middle-Americans still crank that shit up to ten every time. Even worse is the fact that Kid Rock has morphed into a bizarre modern hybrid of Bob Seger, Credence and a hillbilly singing NWA on karaoke, and he’s making a killing doing so. There’s still no end in sight, with rappers like Lil’ Wayne now trying to cash in on the phenomenon.
